We are developers..that's not the breaking news. According to Marc Andressen :
"READ THE GUI GUIDELINES "
This is one thing that most designers may take lightly, unintentionally or intentionally to make their app stand out. But this is a huge mistake. Let's not forget that these guidelines are created after much usability testing and research. It's not that one should not be innovative. But following guidelines is required to maintain consistency which in turn will prevent the user from feeling that he has been sent to Mars.
And in the end one more thing
"Software is eating the world" ,and as developers we are fueling the Frankenstein's monster. Everyone develops for a different set of audience. Some people develop for developers (think API's, IDE's) . Some develop for "clients". But for once everyone should try to ship an app for those who are not like you (developers) and those who don't give you any configurations (clients). Develop for those, about whom you don't know a thing. There may be people who feel that black backgrounds look good, while there may those for whom black backgrounds suck! What are you gonna do in such a situation.
"CODE FOR YOUR GRANDMOTHER"
Yeah that's right.
Lesson No.1: Think of the user as a complete newbie to computer who has been made to sit in front of Linux terminal and asked to do a git rebase. In my experience, my app totally sucked at user experience when I gave to some people to test it. It's help commands were not good enough, my app was not responding the way they wanted them to.
"DON'T ALTER THEIR NORMAL BEHAVIOR, ALTER YOUR CODE "
Lesson 2: User's are very lazy when they have to learn something new (after all computer make life easy!). eg.: When an action has to be completed the user is accustomed to hit enter. You should include this as a part of the code. Don't expect the user to change such normal actions.
Lets take another example,
Windows 8, what's the biggest complaint you hear about it (before continuing, This is being written on Windows 8). Most people don't like being pushed in and out of metro. Like if you open a music file on the good old desktop, you are catapulted into the metro world, Full screen with no hyphen,square & cross to do stuff with it. They are completely bedazzled.
"READ THE GUI GUIDELINES "
This is one thing that most designers may take lightly, unintentionally or intentionally to make their app stand out. But this is a huge mistake. Let's not forget that these guidelines are created after much usability testing and research. It's not that one should not be innovative. But following guidelines is required to maintain consistency which in turn will prevent the user from feeling that he has been sent to Mars.
And in the end one more thing
"Design Dumb, Code Smart"
Here are some links to help you design better
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